California's highest court has shut the door on San Pedro resident Carl Mayes, refusing to review his appeal and leaving intact his 2023 conviction for the 2006 killing of his estranged wife, Tyquesha Myers. With one brief order, the state Supreme Court kept in place a prison term tied to a case that started as a cold-case homicide and ended with a guilty verdict and a decades-long sentence.
The Second District Court of Appeal had already affirmed Mayes' conviction in an opinion filed Jan. 8, 2026, and the California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to take up his petition, effectively ending his state-court appeals, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. The appellate ruling rejected his claims of trial error and left untouched the jury's findings on both the murder count and the weapons enhancement.
About the case
Prosecutors said Myers, 20, was shot in the head and her body was discovered on July 15, 2006, near the Pacific Coast Highway exit on the 710 Freeway in Long Beach. The case went cold for years until new forensic testing and witness accounts pointed investigators back to Mayes, leading to his arrest in September 2019 and his conviction and sentence in 2023, according to the Long Beach Post.
Trial evidence and defense claims
At trial, jurors heard that a coworker from Mayes' barbershop testified Mayes admitted putting a gun to Myers' head and that the gun "went off," and investigators recovered a blanket from the shop with blood that matched Myers' DNA, the appellate record shows, according to CaseMine. Mayes's attorney tried to poke holes in that account, challenging the key witness's credibility and arguing that police had "dropped the ball again and again" during the long-running investigation, according to the Long Beach Post.
What this ruling means
With the state Supreme Court refusing to step in, Mayes has effectively exhausted his state-court options, and his conviction and sentence remain firmly in place, although he could still pursue federal habeas review on limited grounds. Court and police records show he was arrested in September 2019 and later sentenced to a term of roughly 41 years to life, according to the Long Beach Police Department.
The decision closes a long chapter in a case that stretched across decades and leaves the factual record from the trial intact for any future federal review. For now, authorities say the verdict stands, and Mayes remains in state custody.
